It sometimes helps to take a step back from your work to see what the bigger picture is like. I've just bought a new apartment and one of the surprises I've had is the distance from the local internet exchange. As some of you are aware, the further away you are from the exchange, the slower your internet connection tends to be. One of the variables which defines this, and which you can have measured from where you sit, is the attenuation value. Your line attenuation value describes the level of signal degradation (or 'noise') from the connection to your exchange and is affected, mainly, by the distance. It's typically measured in decibels (dB).

Although I'm quite far away from my exchange, and must suffer a connection speed of around 2-3mbps, this doesn't perturb me as, here in the UK, most inhabitants will have access to fibre optic connections within the next two years. The details aren't important but, simply put, I could go from 3mpbs to 100mbps in the space of a few months.

In the context of browser-based content delivery this means a lot. Many developers need to optimize their assets so as to make sure that people are able to access the content quickly. Some of the ways this can be achieved are by lowering the texture resolution, geometric complexity and audio quality of the relevant assets. With the amount of bandwidth we're due to see coming our way in the next few years, there will be less of a need for this (it also means that hosting will get cheaper).

The real affordance provided by an increase in bandwidth is the sheer extent to which the user is able to stream data. This means that we all see massive virtual environments popping up all over the place. World of Warcraft once gave users the ability to enter the virtual world through the use of a streaming client which was no bigger than a few kilobytes. The users downloaded the environment as they played, going against the standard model of needing to download the program in its entirety or install it from a DVD.

We aren't there yet however and it's important to have some sort of context. With that in mind, let's look at the following visual aids.

Internet users in the world by geographic region:

But, as we know from the start of this post, this does not equate to the average speeds experienced by people (based on multiple variables).

This next one should prove to be a little more enlightening!

(Courtesy of http://dailyinfographic.com)

Click to enlarge

Until next time!